Mining, construction, and other large scale excavating operations require fleets of digging, loading, and hauling machines to remove and transport excavated material such as ore or overburden from an area of excavation to multiple different destinations at a common worksite. For such an operation to be profitable, the fleets of machines must be productively and efficiently operated. Many factors can influence productivity and efficiency at a worksite including, among other things, roadway conditions over which the machines travel, and surface maintenance activities of the roadways. It can be difficult, however, to determine when a roadway condition affects machine performance, when maintenance of the roadway should be performed, and which maintenance activities most affect worksite profitability.
Historically, roadway maintenance has been managed through the use of mobile inspection apparatus that automatically maps a surface of the roadway as the apparatus traverses the roadway. U.S. Pat. No. 7,562,563 issued to Wee on Jul. 21, 2009 (the '563 patent) describes an exemplary apparatus. Specifically, the '563 patent discloses an apparatus for automatically inspecting a road surface pavement condition. The apparatus includes a photographing unit, a rut measuring unit, a flatness measuring unit, a data analysis and storage unit, a traveling noise measuring unit, and a position decision unit all equipped within a mobile vehicle. When the vehicle runs along a roadway, photographs of the road are taken, ruts in the road are measured, a flatness of the roadway is measured, and a traveling noise of the roadway is measured. All of the measured values are then indexed according to location, and subsequently analyzed for use in determining a state of the roadway and maintenance and repair of the roadway.
Although the apparatus of the '563 patent may help to determine a status of a roadway, it may be less than optimal. In particular, the apparatus does not consider performance parameters of machines that may use the roadway, how those machines are affected by roadway conditions, or potential long term effects on operating and repair costs of the machine associated with maintenance of the roadway.
The mapping system of the present disclosure is directed to overcoming one or more of the problems set forth above and/or other problems of the prior art.